The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a petition
that sought to speed up the process whereby local communities could choose
Reform and Conservative rabbis funded by the state.

The court had heard a petition by Reform and Conservative Jews seeking state recognition of their movements and public funding. But the petition for a temporary injunction, filed by attorney Orly Erez-Likhovski, failed.

Some 7.1 percent of Israeli Jews define themselves as Reform or
Conservative, according to the soon-to-be-released Israeli Democracy Index for
2013.

This figure might sound surprisingly high,
considering that there are only 110 Reform and Conservative synagogues in
Israel. But it is actually slightly less than the figure found by a different
survey published last year: In that survey, 8 percent of Israeli Jews
considered themselves Reform or Conservative.

JJ: The Kotel was one of the first places you went
to when you first arrived in Israel. How do you describe it? As a place of
prayer?

NS: That’s what people don’t understand; they try to
make the Kotel much less than it is. Many in American Jewish federations will
say, “Why don’t we have this problem at the Lincoln Memorial?” Or, to the contrary:
“Nobody will think to try to change the prayer in the Vatican, so why are we
trying to change it here?”

The Kotel is not the Lincoln Memorial; it’s not the
Vatican. There is no other civilization that has such a symbol, which at the
same time is the central symbol of their national identity, the central symbol
of their historical redemption and at the same time the most important
religious place, the closest to God.